Ezra Goldman is the founder and CEO of Upshift that offers fractional car leasing service for low mileage drivers. Ezra cofounded a dockless bike-share in 1999 and helped design a shared folding electric scooter at the MIT Media Lab with Piaggio in 2006 while doing his Master's in City Planning. He's consulted on innovation for HP and was managing director of a tech startup in Copenhagen, where he also was a Ph.D. candidate studying why Danish people ride bicycles. Upshift has received almost $2M in equity, debt, and project financing from the likes of Urban Us, URBAN-X accelerator by BMW/MINI, an AngelList syndicate led by Sundeep Ahuja, co-founder of NerdWallet, and over 2,300 angels on Republic. 

On this episode we talk about:

1. Ezra's journey as prior to launching his startup
2. What launched him into the world of a startup?
3. What Upshift is trying to solve? And what it takes to build a startup?
4. His conviction in the idea, and why he went all in?
5. Who the right target customers are, and how to identify them?
6. How COVID has impacted his business? And how it impacted his personal life?

Reach out to our guest, Ezra on Linkedin, or email him directly on [email protected]

You can follow or reach out to me, your host Rohan Handa on Linkedin, or email me at [email protected].